Month: August 2010

A P3 Navy aircraft with Hangar One at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. (Copyright 2008: Douglas Messier)

The summer edition of the NPR Post, which is a publication of the NASA Research Park out here at Ames, has an article written by Carol Hanner about its future expansion plans:

Currently host to more than 70 on-site industry, university and non-profit partners, NRP will ultimately comprise 5.7 million square feet of new construction for research and development offices, university classrooms and laboratories, rental housing, museums, and a conference and education center.

New construction at NRP is expected to total approximately $2.8 billion, generating an average of 1,700 construction jobs annually over the next 15 years in the Bay Area, 1,900 in California, and more than 2,800 nationally.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin continued his working visit to the Amur Region on August 28. He arrived in his Lada Kalina car at the site of a geological survey for the construction of the Vostochny Russian National Cosmodrome, where Mr Putin familiarised himself with the blueprints and layout of the future spaceport.

Wyle is part of an academic-industry team that has been selected to support a new Federal Aviation Administration Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation.

The center is a partnership of academia, industry, and government, developed for the purpose of creating a world-class consortium that will address current and future challenges for commercial space transportation.

Alliant Techsystems and NASA conducted a successful ground test earlier today of the second Ares five-segment Development Motor (DM-2). Â The successful test is an important milestone in the development of America’s next generation of launch vehicles.

Initial test data indicated that the motor, which was chilled to a 400 F core temperature since early July, performed as designed, producing approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, or 22 million horsepower, and burned for just over two minutes. Â The test collected 764 channels of data to accomplish 53 test objectives. Â This is the most data ATK has ever collected in a static fire test.

The Roscosmos website has a fascinating transcript of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Uglegorsk, which is adjacent to the nation’s future Vostochny National Space Port. Putin gave formal remarks, engaged in a discussion with Roscosmos Head Anatoly Perminov, and spoke with villagers. The transcript, reproduced at this end of this post, brings to light a great deal of information about the new Russian facility.

Chandrayaan-2, India’s second mission to moon, is being targeted for launch during 2013. Chandrayaan-2 will have an orbiter (satellite), a lander and a rover. Chandrayaan-2 is planned to be launched on board Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. While the lander will be provided by Russia, the orbiter and the rover are being built by ISRO.

Masten Space Systems, a leader in vertical take off, vertical landing (VTVL) rocket vehicles, announced a contract today with NASAâ€™s new Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program. The initial contract is for four flights of test payloads on Xaero, Mastenâ€™s next-generation vehicle currently in assembly.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to congratulate two of its member companies, Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, for winning an initial NASA test flight contract as part of the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) Program. The first round of the program, an open competition for small businesses, was formally kicked off by NASA earlier this year with a Request for Quotations for commercial reusable suborbital flight services.

NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR) has awarded a total of approximately $475,000 to Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif. The awards will allow the two companies to perform test flights of their experimental vehicles near the edge of space.

Next stop space for this cosmic ray detector, Discovery gets ready to rollover for its final flight to space, reflections on a successful spacewalk, Curiosity extends its reach, Viking memories, new solar systems, a cosmic volcano, and Earth in fast-forward.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has requested Oct. 23 on the 45th Space Wingâ€™s calendar for launch of its second Falcon 9 rocket, which will aim to place a Dragon cargo capsule into orbit.

The flight is the first of up to three launches planned under SpaceXâ€™s $278-million Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract with NASA, which is intended to help pay for the rocket and capsuleâ€™s design, development and flight testing.

SpaceX had been hoping to launch the rocket in September but extra preparation time was required.

The Strategic Headquarters for Space Policy, headed by Prime Minister Naoto Kan, has decided Japan will continue to participate in the International Space Station (ISS) project through 2016 and beyond.